Thinking About Cell Phone Guns

Reach Out And Touch Someone

By now, social media has had weeks to deal with the land rush business involved in the gun that looks like a cell phone, seen at the top of this piece.

As a marketing and advertising consultant who has worked on a sizable number of client concerns that went against my own personal beliefs, I'm not going to get into how I feel about this. As a pro, you have to take the mindset of an attorney, argue the best case in the court of the marketplace, and trust in the verdict of the public. Doing anything less limits not just your billings, but also your opportunities to learn for future clients. I've learned some truly breakthrough points from clients that I rarely discuss. It's just the way of the work.

So what's really telling here isn't the existence of a weapon that looks like something else... but that it's the first of its kind. As the market demand shows, there's a strong desire for many enthusiasts to carry a firearm without anyone knowing they have one. We've also established that due to effective lobbying, restricting the hobby is rarely a legislative possibility.

So the question isn't whether or not there will be cell phone guns. More, it's a question of when the piece will be both, and much more concealable.

But let's go further, really. Why should things that a user wants to conceal look like, well, what you'd expect them to look like? Putting the same phone tech into something that looks like a compact mirror would seem to be easy, and a natural for a younger demographic, especially in a school setting. Make it more like a tape measure with a slide out screen for hard hat types, and yes, that's another seemingly simple transformation to firearm. I'd be surprised if an adult toy that allowed for a more discrete pass through an airport security checkpoint would be a tough product to sell.

Oh, and if you can combine all of these capabilities into one device?

I want to make ads for that product.

And have equity in the company that makes it...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Lurching Towards Progress

It's easy to see how the Internet has had a coarsening effect on modern culture. Just looking at the comments section, or a walk through social media, could convince you that we've never been less thoughtful as a species. But for every trollish moment and churlish experience, other points towards enlightenment come to the fore. I thought I'd share a few with you here, just to encourage.

1) The end of gratuitous laddie embellishment.

I used to work in marketing for music instrument retail, and there was no more embarrassing part of the business than the periodic photo shoots and "booth babe" use. While it was defensible on a pure mercantile and demographic level, it also seemed incredibly limiting, since the only way the field was going to grow would be to, well, become more welcoming to the very people who were likely turned off by the practice.

This is more or less what's happened, since the Web makes the use of models pointless... just like in "Playboy." This week saw the news that two of the larger surviving guitar magazines had done away with the practice. With those sort of models available to all whenever they want them, adding them to guitar shots has become passe, and amen to that. Oh, and as a further aside? Walk into an MI store now, and you'll find a much more welcoming environment towards women, and a great deal of different sized gear for different sized people.

2) An inexorable force towards, well, freedom.

While the Web has done no end of ill for professional journalism due to the considerable issues involved in monetizing content, it's also a clear factor in the uprising against repressive regimes across the world. From the Arab Spring to the Panama Papers, from Wikileaks to (perhaps) small campaign donors mitigating the impact of dark money PACs in the U.S., the Web has been the key leveling factor in systems that were previously thought infallible.

3) Activism can be done 24/7/365, and from nearly anywhere.

Fifty years ago, if you had an issue with something that was happening elsewhere in the world, your ability to do anything about it required extraordinary commitment, as well as personal flexibility in one's professional life. Now, social media makes action, even if it doesn't seem terribly sincere or effective, something you can do at any moment you've got a connection. It's not a coincidence that an expansion of personal rights, social boycotts, and buy-one give-one businesses have all exploded in the past decade.

4) Data has never been better, and it's always getting better.

This falls right into the wheelhouse of marketing and advertising, but for me, one of the great parts about working in adtech is that the data is always getting more exact and more telling. From greater verification to more esoteric calculations and ways of thinking about the numbers, there's clear inspiration from analytic-driven fields like sports and financial markets... and, honestly, more creativity than you might imagine. That kind of thing is only going to keep growing with the IoT and mobile-first use, of course.

5) Building your personal brand, and crowd-sourcing, has never been easier.

Mostly because staying in touch with friends and colleagues is something we all just do now, because it's really no trouble at all. And as a personal aside, some readers might remember a column where my niece did a personal piece of marketing to crowdsource her expenses in fighting off thyroid cancer. This week saw the return of a clear prognosis, and the transition to far more appropriate points of concern for an 18-year-old, such as college and the prom. Progress indeed.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

The IoDad

The IoDad Believes In Belt Holsters

How will the Internet of Things achieve true market penetration? By allowing consumers the ability to make their lives better, easier and more convenient... or by amplifying their original selves to levels that they were previously unable to attain.

Which is why, honestly, it's going to be Dad-driven.

I'll cut to the chase, because there's venture capital to woo. (Or maybe a YouTube viral comedy video to make. That's a pretty common intersection, actually.)

If you gave me the ability to:

1) Have every light turn off when someone leaves the room

2) Sound an ear-splitting alarm when dishes are left in the sink, especially when there's room in the dish washer

3) Turn off air conditioners and space heaters when there are no humans in the room

4) Record and play digital video clips when people (well, OK, children) fail to put items away, especially laundry, because laundry

5) All while calculating the expense involved and/or saved as a running tally, either to be deducted from an allowance or college savings account, with that tally...

6) Pushed to any available screen, via a Dad-only smartphone app that's on an old school belt clip, because nothing says IoDad more than holstering stuff on your belt

7) With the ability to auto-play speeches about the electric, heating, air conditioning or environmental reason why such things are important, and

8) Back it all up with a countdown clock as to when various family members will head off to college / military...

Well, um, just take all of my money already and give me this thing.

Then, take all of my family's money to take it away...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.